Food Budgets – Using Creativity and Prioritizing For Healthy Eating

Does the idea of changing your diet to healthier foods seem completely overwhelming? So many people have the idea that there is simply no way they can afford to eat healthy…but I’m here to assure that this couldn’t be farther from the truth!

This concept is so important, and one that I feel cannot be emphasized enough. With a little prioritizing, determination, planning ahead, and research about how to accomplish healthier meals in incremental steps, you really can be on your way to eating healthier while keeping costs down.

I’m not going to lie to you: you may spend more money than you are spending right now; or you may even save yourself some money up front (depending on your shopping habits). But the cost of eating unhealthy, processed foods on the back end is going to add up to much more overall money spent than if you are eating healthier foods to begin with. Just think about it in terms of where you want to spend your money, and it really might start to make more sense (and cents, no pun intended!).

Mainly, I want to emphasize that you do not have to buy all organic foods in order to eat a healthy diet. Don’t get me wrong – buying organic is a good thing to do for our health and the environment, but not everyone can afford it. The key is removing processed foods and buying whole food ingredients. If you are confused about what exactly the difference is between these terms, read How Well Do You Know Your Food? Find Out!

This post was inspired by my recent trip to the Grocery Outlet in the city where I live, Boise, Idaho. I hadn’t been to this store for many years, but was told by friends that good deals on food could be found here. I admit I was a little skeptical, but I wanted to go have a look. It was surprising to see things like grass-fed organic cheese on the shelf, but I also know that the selection changes from trip to trip, so going back and looking carefully at what’s available is useful to getting the most out of your dollar at stores like this.

As costs continue to rise, I have slowly been developing strategies to save money on food. Other than from local farms, I used to shop almost exclusively at our local health food co-op. It is only a mile and a half from our home, so the convenience of it has always been appealing. Of course, this was also back when we had the steady income of a regular job. Last summer we started a solar/green IT business, and as anyone who has owned a business knows, things are slow to start – especially in a bad economy.

Over the last year I’ve also started shopping more at Fred Meyer, which isn’t terribly close to my house. But I’ve started going there about once a month. I stock up on Organic Prairie bacon (I haven’t yet found a good local source for bacon that is acceptable to my standards) and hot dogs from this store because they are $1.50 to 2.00 cheaper per package. Just think of the savings there!

UPDATE – 11/2010 since this post was written, we have stopped buying Organic Prairie products because they are affiliated with Organic Valley which does not do things as sustainably as they should – earlier this year they decided to prohibit their farmers from selling raw milk to their customers, and they use ultra-high heat pasteurization which kills nutrients in foods. Now we get our pork from the local grass-fed, organic farm where we get our raw milk and beef. Find a local source for this food – it tastes better and ultimately is safer. With food recalls happening left and right, you can’t afford to buy processed, industrial foods from the grocery store.

Here are some of the things I’ve discovered which enable our family to afford healthy food:

Don’t feel like everything has to be done all at once. Avoid getting into the trap of thinking that if you can’t do everything, you can’t do it at all. Make small changes as you can and when you can. If you believe the only way to eat healthy is to convert everything in your home from conventional food to organic food overnight, you’ll only hold yourself back from making any changes.

The most important aspect of moving from processed to healthier foods is doing small things one step at a time. If you allow excuses to get in your way of a healthier life, change will surely never take place.

Implement simple changes you can realize benefit from immediately. Instead of buying margarine or fake butter spreads, buy real butter – even if it’s not organic. Trade unhealthy vegetable oils and shortening for coconut oil, olive oil, and palm oils. Try shopping at grocery outlet stores – these are great places to find items like organic butter and cheese for half the price you would spend in expensive health food stores. You can also find reduced prices on healthy oils at these types of stores such as olive oil.

Realize that all organic foods are not necessarily healthy. The main point about eating healthier should be about removing processed foods. Many packaged foods labeled “organic” and even “natural” and “healthy” are just as processed as other packaged foods that aren’t labeled with this terminology.

Learn to cook and prepare foods from scratch. Here are some examples: if you are making Hamburger Helper or Kraft Macaroni and Cheese from a box, stop buying these processed foods and start making the equivalent from scratch. It does take some extra time, but with some research and practice, you can come up with several meals with the same ingredients made at home that you can prepare relatively quickly and on a regular basis that are delicious and nourishing for your family.

If you have not spent much time in the kitchen – now’s the time to start. There are many fantastic and free resources on the Internet. Web sites and blogs devoted to food and cooking can give you motivation and some great ideas – you could pretty much find all the recipes, support, and ideas you need if you have an Internet connection without ever having to buy another cookbook again. For some easy recipe ideas, visit our recipes page.

If you don’t have time to cook everyday, start preparing foods ahead of time. For example, you can soak oatmeal or other whole grains bought in bulk from the store. Use filtered water and lemon juice or apple cider vinegar overnight – it only takes about two minutes of time. Then you will have a healthy breakfast in the morning instead of boxed cereal which contains extruded grains (stripped of all nutrients during processing), is full of chemicals and other toxic ingredients. You can add whole milk yogurt, fruit, and real maple syrup to it.

Another example would be to buy a whole chicken, roast it in the oven, and then use the carcass and remaining bones and other meat to make a bone broth. This can be done in advance and left on the stove or crockpot for many hours (up to 24). When you are done making broth, you have a delicious and nutritious base for soups, casseroles, and many other uses that can be spread over multiple meals. You can also substitute meat bone broths for meat in a meal.

Eliminate processed foods from your kitchen as you can and trade them out for their whole food equivalents. One of the most important reasons I can think of to stop buying processed “convenience” foods is that these foods are full of fillers, chemicals, and preservatives and are, in a nutshell, not real food. Your body will gain neither nutrition nor a feeling of fullness from eating these foods.

The cost of these foods may be cheaper up front, but over time, your health will suffer and you will be in a constant state of hunger, which doesn’t justify the cost of the food to begin with. Over time, these foods also cause a state of malnutrition due to their lack of nutrients, and can actually cause nutrient depletion in your body due to the content of their ingredients.

If you believe your children won’t eat something different that might be healthy for them, then that’s exactly what will happen. Just by assuming your children would never bother eating something, you set yourself up for failure.

In our house, I’ve converted our meals from something unhealthy to something healthier many times by not having those unhealthy choices around anymore. When I got questions like, “where’s that other food?” My answer was simply, “we’re not eating that anymore, this is what we’re having.” Just remember, you’re the parent.

Make no mistake, it can take some time, but eventually this practice becomes acceptable. Your family will forget about the other foods you were eating and start to look forward to the replacement, and you can feel good about it because it’s healthier.

Decide what your priorities are and stick to them. One of the most important types of foods to eat organic or sustainably produced are meats, meat products, and fats. These foods are stored in our cells and can have lasting effects on our health. If you decide to buy some things organic while others not, prioritize based on this type of knowledge available about food.

If you can’t afford to buy any meats, meat products, or fats organic or sustainably raised, then at least buy the closest you can to the whole-food versions of these foods. Only buy meats with no other ingredients in them – avoid meats with preservatives, seasonings, flavorings, and other ingredients that look suspicious or you cannot pronounce. Look for “nitrate free” or “hormone-free” versions of these foods in your grocery store. These types of foods are available on the conventional market more and more, and are better alternatives to meat that is full of chemicals, preservatives, and other toxins. Read labels and begin to know what your choices are. Sometimes there are better choices in your grocery store than what you’ve been buying. And if you take the time to read and do a little research, you could be buying healthier meat, meat products, and fats for your family than you are currently.

Learn to rely on items in your cupboard for home-made cleaning formulas. Use lemon juice, vinegar, baking soda, borax, essential oils, hydrogen peroxide, and coconut oil for cleaners, clothing detergent, and many other useful things you might otherwise spend a lot of money on at the store and damage your health and the environment.

Choose one new concept to learn on a regular basis and practice it until you feel comfortable. For instance, try making yogurt with some whole milk. This is a great way to get fermented foods in your diet. Fermented foods help maintain friendly bacteria levels in your immune system and are a good way to keep healthy. Or instead of cooking with unhealthy, rancid vegetable oils, switch to stable fats with healthy saturated fat like butter, lard, tallow, or coconut oil. For an overview of why real [saturated] fats are important, read The Importance of Dietary Fats.

Make a habit of keeping lists with things that you know you are going to need at the store. If you keep track of what you want to buy before and when you go to the store, you will save forgetting something important and possibly having to make additional trips that would otherwise be unnecessary.

If you do shop at the grocery store, stay on the outer perimeter of the store. Most processed and unhealthy foods are in the middle aisles, and whole foods tend to be on the outer walls – such as meats, seafood, and produce.

Use coupons. There are some organic foods on the market that you can use coupons to purchase if you are in a pinch and can’t buy local foods. For links to coupons for organic foods and organic products, read Saving Money On Your Organic Life.

Learn what your “staples” and basics are. These are the foods you’ll want to have regularly so you can depend on certain foods for your regularly prepared meals. For some ideas, here is My Kitchen Staples post.

Buy local. Purchasing local foods often reduces the cost of the food since transportation fees calculated into the price of foods are not a factor. You can often get a better deal on foods if you are willing to go out to the farm and pick them up. Find other people who also share your desire to support local farms and eat healthy food, and arrange to carpool or take turns picking up food.

Do the research and get to know others who are also interested in a sustainable lifestyle. The more you network and learn, the better off you’ll be and the more opportunities you’ll find to get healthy food and gain knowledge of how to prepare it. There are many places to look – both within your local community and on the Internet – the majority of them are free to access. Just from keeping this blog, I became friends with a lovely woman who sent me starter cultures for a kombucha scoby and dairy kefir grains. Thanks Jen!

Be willing to sacrifice other items in your life that aren’t as important. In our family, we make healthy food a priority which means we do without a lot of extras like new clothes, going out to the movies, going out to dinner, or just buying something on the spur-of-the-moment that we really don’t need (a luxury item like a new CD, DVD, a video game, or whatever on your list that you can do without).

I realized years ago that I definitely don’t need more stuff (in fact, I need badly need to purge my house of stuff), and the most important things in our life are paying our bills and buying healthy food. We don’t go on vacations anymore because we are in frugality mode, so all of our available income is focused on necessity only.

But I’m not complaining. I feel truly blessed to have been able to make it through this first year of being a new business owner in an unstable economy, were successful in keeping our house, and have still been able to buy healthy food. Besides my family and close friends, those are the only things in life that matter. If the house would have had to go, it’s really just a house, We would have dealt with finding a rental, and life would have gone on.

Look for opportunities to trade or barter. If you have a product or service you can offer to someone for trade, do it! Many people are happy and willing to trade for something they want that you have to offer.

Remember, if you are committed to a healthy lifestyle, and you dedicate yourself to making things work, sometimes things just have a way of turning out in ways you would never imagine. Our family is on a tight budget because of our new business. Last year we made arrangements to buy a side of grass-fed beef with other families so we could afford it. The meat also comes with weekly raw milk. Our family really relies on the raw milk because we are all intolerant of pasteurized dairy products. This year, it was looking like we just wouldn’t be able to afford the meat and milk because our money situation was becoming very bleak. When we filed our taxes this year, we learned that we were getting a large refund that would come just in time to pay for our milk and meat. This was nothing short of a miracle and I am so thankful to God this came through. It was indeed an unexpected blessing to us.

Buying healthier choices on occasion as you can afford and they are available is better than not buying them at all. If you can only afford organic once or twice a month, it’s better than nothing. Do what you can when you can, and don’t compare yourself to someone else.

Learn how to stretch out your food. Since meat is one of the more expensive foods, use less of it and more of other protein containing foods that are lower-cost and still nutritious such as eggs or whole-fat dairy (look for non-ultra pasteurized and hormone/antibiotic free varieties – which are becoming more pervasive). Use bone broths in place of meats with meals. We save bacon or sausage for the weekends and eat eggs, fruit, yogurt, and other foods on the weekdays. We also eat a lot of Organic Prairie hot dogs because they are pretty cheap and sustainably-produced.

Learn which organic fruits and vegetables are a priority. The Environmental Working Group has a list of the most contaminated fruits and vegetables called ‘The Dirty Dozen‘. For those of us on a budget, this guide can help you prioritize which foods are most important to buy organic, and which can be bought conventional and thoroughly cleaned.

Consider growing your own food. To start, try growing a just a few plants producing foods you are likely to use a lot each year. You can start from seed a lot of things you’d like to grow for not a lot of money – even organic seeds. It has taken me about four years to get my garden to a condition where it is actually producing, and a lot of learning.

Last year the biggest change I made was very minimal – I added one bag of Happy Frog to my garden box (I spent $20) when I was tilling and planting, and my yield was higher than ever, and I had virtually no weeds. This is a sharp contrast to previous years where not much was growing and I had a forest of weeds to pull every week. Here’s my post on budgeting and planning for my garden.

However, learning what items to buy high quality and which to not worry about as much are important. Here are some items I won’t compromise on quality, period:

These supplements (which are the same as food) have made a huge difference in the health of my family. If you have a compromised immune system, are lacking important organs like appendix or gallbladder, and have eaten a modern diet for years, you likely need all of these supplements. Our food supply has become so adulterated with toxins and thanks to conventional farming practices, has effectively stripped many trace nutrients from our soil, rendering our food much less nutritious than in the past.

The cod liver oil is food, and it contains Vitamins A, D, and EPA, and DHA. For more information on the significance of cod liver oil in the diet, visit the Weston A. Price Foundation. The WAPF is a non-profit organization seeking to educate about sustainable living, food, and farming. They do not receive funding from companies to endorse their products.

Probiotics are the friendly bacteria necessary to maintain a healthy, diversely populated immune system and digestive tract, which is the foundation of our health. It is also extremely important to rotate probiotic formulas, because like bad bacteria, good bacteria have to continually change in order to be most effective. The key to maintaining ideal good bacteria levels in the gut is making certain you have a diverse population of different bacteria in your body.

You cannot get good quality probiotics from most store-bought sources (including dietary supplements and conventional dairy products). Even though they are cheaper than good quality products, the cost is less because the claims made on packaging about strains and cultures are usually overstated. In processing, conventional foods loses its potency, nutrition, and efficacy. They are therefore a monumental waste of your hard-earned money. It’s very true that in many instances you get what you pay for, and this is no exception.

Is a good multi-vitamin important?

That depends. If you have been eating a modern diet for many years and have health issues, it is likely that you would benefit from a good quality multi-vitamin for a period of time. You should consult a knowledgeable health care practitioner for advice. The body takes years to disintegrate, and conversely, years to build back up to health.

If you are going to take a multi-vitamin, the best kind to take is one that is whole-foods based, organically-sourced, and contains co-factors and enzymes naturally present in foods that allow your body to assimilate those nutrients properly. A cheap, synthetically-produced vitamin simply won’t achieve this (99 percent of what’s on the market), and is not only a waste of your hard-earned money but can also damage your health.

Real food will never damage your health as it contains all the correct ratios of enzymes, co-factors, and nutrients needed by the human body. Nothing produced in a laboratory will ever compare to nature’s perfect formula.

17 Comments

Thanks Cheryl! I hope this helps people struggling with and wondering about how to budget and organize for healthy meals. It’s true that a lot of healthy food is more expensive, but as with anything else, buying raw ingredients is usually the best choice for cost and health.

Really interesting. A huge supermarket with terrible practices has opened up in our area, and has prices people think of as “cheaper” than other alternatives, but it’s pretty clear based on one visit that the stuff that is cheaper is all the processed stuff– not real ingredients. There is a whole aisle of Easter stuff branded with children’s characters… That’s not food! I love the idea of slowly getting processed foods out of our diets… There’s also a huge range of “drinks” and “snacks” that people spend money on and if you take them out of your diet you save loads of money.

AJ – I hate the Easter stuff in the store. It’s all pretty much genetically-modified industrial waste full of preservatives, dyes, and chemicals. How is it that people have been duped into thinking that this is okay for us to consume?

I’ve actually watched kids eat stuff like this, at a party, for example, and then witnessed the absolute and utter break-down of order and peace. Those kids eat that crap and then begin to behave like wild animals. I have a friend who goes around to facilities that care for autistic children and talks about improving the food choices there because it has a direct impact on their health and behavior. Have you ever heard of autistic children losing complete control and acting out in ways their parents cannot handle? This is one of the reasons. If you go to the average care facility, you will find that most of the food they provide to clients is absolute garbage, and then people wonder why behavior problems crop up? It’s incredibly frustrating.

Excellent Post Raine.
I appreciate the fact that you emphasize that not everyone can afford to by all organic. I love so many of the Real Food Blogs that I follow, but some are being very dogmatic about buying anything that is not organic. I feel these are points that actually in the end hinder or completely stop many people dead in their tracks from changing their eating habits. I realize that in the end of course organic is the ultimate goal.
We ourselves eat organic and mainly we can afford this because we grow it all ourselves. Our income could never afford to buy totally organic from the store no matter what way you cut it.
To encourage people to switch how they eat, move over to fresh wholesome foods, make their own meals from scratch minus no out of the can / pkg. ingredients is the beginning steps.

Great post Raine! I was just thinking of asking you which probiotics you use, and then you included it here. We haven’t begun taking them yet, but I think we need to start.

I’m not always the best at preventing waste in my kitchen, but I’m so proud when I do. I think this would fall under “stretch out your food”. We had 1 1/2 leftover grass fed burgers recently, and some noodles (plain) in the fridge. They both needed to be used, or they were going to end up in the garbage. I had the brilliant idea to crumble the burgers up, add a jar of organic spaghetti sauce from Trader Joe’s, toss in the noodles and call it spaghetti. I froze it in portions that will be easy to pull out and use for lunches for my son. I got 4 easy meals from items that were about to become garbage.

Pamela – thanks for your comments! I was one that for awhile thought everything had to be organic (wouldn’t that be nice!), and our family certainly doesn’t eat organic all the time. But I am really careful to watch for sales on things so that I can include more organic in our diets. For instance, at the health food store last night I stocked up on 4 packages of frozen sustainable broccoli and peas (each) because the packages were only $1.60, which is a fantastic deal! And, the packages are 10 ounces and 12 ounces in size. They usually last about three to four meals in our house.

So many people just give up if they can’t afford organic, which is really sad. They don’t understand that it’s buying WHOLE ingredients instead of that box of cereal, loaf of processed bread, or package of crackers, processed lunch meat, or cheese.

Roast a whole chicken and make several meals or eat the whole thing if you have a larger family and then make chicken broth. It’s so easy! Buy a roast and cook it, then make stew, sandwiches, or a casserole, tacos, or on a salad. Buy grains in bulk, make it yourself! Some things take time, but if you are at home, you can take all the time you need (and many people stay at home and still eat a lot of processed foods). If you don’t know how to make it yourself, get online and start researching. There are so many great blogs and resource sites for this sort of thing. If you want to delve more, buy Nourishing Traditions.

Jen – thanks for sharing what you did with your leftovers; I hope that is inspiring to some of those who are unsure about how to use foods from last night’s dinner. I try to put leftover meats in salads, casseroles, and my even my eggs the next morning. There’s so much you can do!

I do just what you replied about Raine. Been for years. Actually been pretty much healthy eating way before the REAL FOOD Movement even came into being. That is how you can make your money stretch. I don’t need to delve more…I own Nourishing Traditions.
I just appreciated that you were not stressing that people had to switch 100% over to organic in order to eat healthy.

Pamela – sorry, when I was saying those things I should have specified that I was talking to “you” the general “you” and not you in specific, since I know a lot of others will be reading the comments as well as the post. You are so fortunate to have had this knowledge for so many years, while many of us are just getting started (me, only about 4). I know how good you are about growing all your food naturally and I’m not surprised in the slightest that you own NT.

I’m sure a lot of people could learn a lot from you as is evident by your wonderful web site with so much great information and all the experience you have. Thanks much for your comments and reading my posts. You are very much appreciated!

I am trying to figure out how to do this on our now VERY limited budget. We don’t eat boxed, canned, pre-packaged food. I mostly stick to meats, dairy, and frozen veggies, with dried fruit, nuts, and coconut for snacks. But it is all now store brand, for the most part, and even with that it is not stretching the whole month. We’re at the point of being on food stamps, and our $267 doesn’t really last the whole month for 5 adults (a just-retired Marine, two grown teens training to join the Marine Corps, and a breastfeeding, diabetic mama who is always hungry) and a 9 month old who gets little portions of most of what the grown-ups get. I can’t eat grains or rice at all, or beans, for that matter, but I’ve started buying them again as “fillers” for the other adults. Husband hasn’t found a job since retiring, and the older kids have been applying for job after job for months. There is no money left out of his retirement check after rent is paid. Free-range eggs are $4.39/doz. Grass-fed ground beef is $8/lb. Kerrygold butter is $4.30/8 oz. Most of the stuff we used to buy just is waaayyy out of our price range right now, and even though some of it is available slightly cheaper at Trader Joe’s, any gas money we have is saved for job hunting/interviews and church on Sunday. Fifty cent for a box of mac and cheese that will feed 3 people lunch looks really good when things are this tight. :/

Davida – I can understand just how difficult your situation must be. If it were me, I’d focus most of that money on healthy fats and proteins like meats, eggs, butter, etc. as that’s where the nutrients are. I realize those items are more expensive, but you can only do what you can do.

What about getting bones and making bone broth to keep on hand all the time? This is a very cheap way to get in lots of minerals and amino acids, and broths are so versatile, you can use them in so many different dishes, and even omit meat in some cases (just add in butter or ghee, or even coconut oil) to save $$, and then use plenty of vegetables, herbs, spices, etc. I have bone broth going on my stove all the time, and I use it in so many things. I wrote a post on how to make inexpensive bone broths with chicken legs and thighs. I use these pretty regularly and it’s cheaper, and still makes delicious broth:

Have you tried checking around for cheaper sources of some of the foods you buy? Here, Kerrygold butter is about $3.35 for an 8-ounce rectangle of butter. It’s still more than conventional butter, but I wouldn’t buy anything else unless I could get good raw butter from a good source.

Here’s another idea: have you tried buying foods direct from the farmer? Those can often be cheaper (although not always) than buying the same types of foods at the store. At our health food store, it’s more expensive to buy the organic, grassfed meats than it is to buy it from the farmer.

Also, focus on the cheaper cuts of meat such as ground beef and stew meat, it can be used for many of the same things steak and roasts can be used…soups, stews, casseroles, etc. and you can stretch by using a bit less, using bone broth, and butter/ghee/coconut oil and also lard/tallow or other animal/bird fats if you have them with veggies, rice, etc. Be sure to save all your leftover fats when you do cook meats in a container and put it in the freezer, and add to it each time if necessary for future meals. Also, think about organ meats, you can add small amounts of these saved out in small portions for cooking in the freezer for each of your meals to pack a big nutrient punch. Organ meats are cheaper than all the other meat you can buy.

Hopefully your income situation will change soon, hang in there. I know just what you are going through as we just came out of an almost 3-year period where our income was greatly reduced because my husband was laid off from his professional job in early 2009, and we started a solar business with our 401K money (which is now gone). Ever since we did that we have been living nearly in the poverty level. My husband closed our business down this fall and he just got a great new job again as a programmer, so we are finally going to start coming out of the hole. Best of luck to you and I’d love to hear about your results with using any of these suggestions.